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What Is Housing Discrimination? Discrimination in housing, in its simplest form, is when a tenant, a would-be tenant or homebuyer is treated differently than others because of his/her race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, familial status, marital status, age, sexual orientation, source of income or any other arbitrary reason. This may involve refusing to rent or sell to someone, making them follow rules that no one else has to follow, or treating them worse than others are treated in some way because they belong to a protected class. See our link to . Housing discrimination can also occur when a landlord refuses to accommodate a disabled tenant's reasonable request for special treatment, which is needed because of their disability. This special treatment might mean changing or waiving a rule (such as a no-pets policy, if the disabled tenant needs a service animal) or allowing physical changes to the dwelling (such as building a wheelchair ramp or changing the doorknob to an easy-to-open handle). In 1968, Congress signed into legislation the federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to discriminate against people in the sale or rental of housing based on their color, religion, sex or national origin. In 1988, the Fair Housing Amendments Act expanded these protections to include familial status and disability. The Fair Housing Amendments Act also established design and construction guidelines for some new housing built after March 13, 1991 in order to ensure accessibility to persons with disabilities. Today it is illegal to discriminate against a prospective tenant or an in-place tenant based on his/her race, national origin, color, gender, disability, and familial status. In California, it is also illegal to discriminate based on a person's sexual orientation, source of income, age, marital status or any other arbitrary reason. There are legal forms of housing discrimination that are not protected by the fair housing laws. They include discrimination due to bad credit, low income, bad tenancy history and felony conviction, to name a few. Landlords do have the right to deny housing to people who do not qualify based on these criteria. However, if you know a landlord rents to some tenants who do not qualify, but denies others with the same history, you may have a housing discrimination case. It all boils down to a basic rule - Treat everybody the same, but allow for the special needs of persons with disabilities. Project Sentinel investigates over 600 cases of housing discrimination each year, with approximately 20% being referred for further investigation and enforcement to an agency such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development or a private attorney. |
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